U.S. Congressman Jim Gerlach is sworn into house in the United State House of Representatives in January 2002. Next to him is his mother the late Helen Gerlach who passed in 2008 and next to her is Karen Gerlach, Jim Gerlach's wife. Photo by John Strickler/The Mercury

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In the final calculus, the meager legislative results of being a member of Congress were just not worth the sacrifice required to do the job for Jim Gerlach.

Ultimately, that was what led the 58-year-old Republican to announce last week that he will not seek re-election to 6th District seat he has held since 2003, Gerlach said during an interview with The Mercury.

“We’re really not seeing much change in the legislative process down here in Washington and we’re not getting a lot achieved with all the tussle and gridlock, we’re really in kind of a holding pattern,” Gerlach said.

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“Realistically, I don’t see much movement on either side any time soon and I began to wonder whether it was worth not seeing my family, all the traveling and the permanent campaigning, when we’re not really getting a lot done,” Gerlach said.

Gerlach, of Chester Springs, said he had been mulling the decision for some time, but resolved to wait until the break over the holidays to talk to his family and give the question his full attention.

“I’ve been thinking about it on-and-off for a few months, but I wanted to wait until I got home for the holidays to concentrate on it without all the hustle and bustle here in Washington,” Gerlach said.

The decision made, Gerlach said he has no particular plans for the future, other than a desire to remain involved in public policy in some way, although, he said, not as a Washington lobbyist.

As a member of the majority on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee — a seat which Gerlach suspects many of his fellow House members are already maneuvering to obtain — Gerlach said he learned quickly how much public policy gets decided on the committee that determines how to pay for those public policy initiatives.

Being appointed to that committee “was a real education,” said Gerlach, “and I was a little worried at first because I don’t have a tax background.”

But he’s a quick study and Gerlach said perhaps his biggest regret about not being around after his terms ends in December is the likelihood he won’t be around to participate in a major re-write of the tax code Republicans had hoped to have underway already.

“But that got bogged down in the fall with the (government) shutdown,” Gerlach said.

But he also agreed that a Jan. 3 Molly Ball column in The Atlantic made an interesting point — that House Speaker John Boehner needed to allow the shutdown to play out in order to chasten and rein-in recalcitrant “Tea Party” Republicans who were making legislative compromise difficult by clinging to uncompromising policy positions.

Boehner “didn’t want a deal that ended the shutdown without resolving the more serious matter of the debt ceiling, and he wanted his unruly caucus to learn a lesson. So he waited,” Ball wrote.

“Post-shutdown, things changed. The negotiators — House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray — actually got together. They worked out a compromise. They hit the deadline. And then both houses of Congress passed it,” she wrote.

“I have no personal problem with our leadership,” Gerlach said. “I like Speaker Boehner. I think he has the right agenda, but I recognize they have a diverse caucus that they have to steer.”

But whether or not the new ability to reach common ground will last is anybody’s guess.

“The jury’s still out. I don’t think we’ll know if its going to last until we get to the debt ceiling, where I think some people may really dig in their heels,” said Gerlach.

Gerlach said he hoped the lessons of the shutdown will be learned by both sides.

Both the legislative and executive branches should focus on the possible, he said.

He pointed to President Clinton’s “move to the middle” when Republicans took over both houses of Congress in the 1990s. “He saw where things were headed and he focused on the things where there was common ground and got some things done.”

Now, “President Obama is still taking a more partisan position, perhaps to see if the Democrats can take back the House and then he will have an easier time, but if that doesn’t happen, will he do what President Clinton did? I hope he does,” said Gerlach.

The Republicans also need to step up, he said.

“We have to have a positive agenda, propose solutions for jobs, the economy, education rather than just vote against other people’s initiatives. We can’t just be the party of ‘no,’” said Gerlach, conceding that impression has grown among Americans in part because of the more than 40 House votes taken to de-fund the Affordable Care Act, known to most as “Obamacare.”

Make no mistake, Gerlach thinks that legislation “is a monstrosity,” but he said Republicans would be better served politically, and better serve the country, by offering realistic alternatives.

Although he would like to have spent most of his time on policy questions, Gerlach has been unable to avoid the political side of the job, both because demographic changes have made the 6th District one of the most closely-watched swing districts in the country, but also because the two-year term leaves very little time when House members are not campaigning, or planning a campaign.

“It’s the era of the permanent campaign,” he said. “From November to January, nothing really happens and then the new year comes and the robo-calls start, the emails. You get no real time off from the campaign and it’s tough to legislate that way.”

Part of the cause for the “permanent campaign” is the short-length of the terms.

“I do think in this day and age, a two-year-term is too short. I think it should be four years and leave the Senate at six, but those terms are in the Constitution” and given the current political difficulty in such basic functions as adopting an annual budget, Gerlach said he did not see agreement to make a change to the Constitution coming to Washington any time soon.

Further, the increasing number of “safe districts” in the country allows for candidates who are further left, and further right, of the mainstream political spectrum to be elected without fear of consequences at the voting booth for taking uncompromising positions and delivering little in terms of tangible results, Gerlach said.

“When you have 435 seats (in the House of Representatives) but only 50 are competitive, you only have 50 members who need to be flexible, and it gets harder and harder to find common ground,” he said. “And every 10 years when they re-district, more districts get a little bit safer.”

Gerlach said he recognized the irony of that statement coming from someone who has arguably benefitted from the re-drawing of a district that now includes parts of five counties, but not one entire county, but few would say his district has historically been “safe.”

Democrats at the national level have repeatedly targeted the 6 District as “winnable” since 2002, and Gerlach’s margins of victory often have been ridiculously thin. Some national publications have, at times, called them the slimmest in the nation.

As a result, over the years there has been a lot of money spent on both sides of the aisle trying to win the 6th District seat, which stretches across portions of Chester, Montgomery, Berks and Lebanon counties.

It is not a cheap proposition, as Gerlach certainly knows.

“Philadelphia is the fourth most expensive media market in the nation and one week’s worth of television ads to get good penetration costs $800,000,” Gerlach said. “That’s a lot of money. In a close race, you can go through $2 million in three weeks and you can’t afford not to be running ads if your opponent is. You’ve got to compete.”

“One district-wide mailing can cost $50,000,” and then you add in the funding streams unleashed by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision “and it gets to be a pretty expensive proposition. But you can’t afford not to advertise. As a candidate, you are no different than any other product or service that needs to advertise to get in front of people,” Gerlach said.

Nevertheless, Gerlach said the amount of money now required to run a campaign is “not corrosive. It’s freedom of speech. Where it goes off track is not when the ads are hard-hitting, I don’t have a problem with that, it’s when they’re not factual or relevant to the job you’re running for.”

So he won’t miss not having to worry about those things for the next 12 months as both parties jostle for position and to find the candidate who can win the seat.

In the meantime, “I’m not going anywhere. There is still work to do,” said Gerlach.

Of the work he has done in his 11 years in office, Gerlach said there are two aspects of which he is the most proud.

“I’m really proud of the constituent services we provide, helping a veteran get his benefits, that kind of thing, our office staff really excels at that,” Gerlach said.

As for legislation, “well I’m pleased about the bill I just authored and the President signed that allows four-strain flu vaccine into the market place,” Gerlach. “But in terms of my time here, I was proud to be part of the Medicare Part D bill, that was good for seniors and I helped get language in there to ensure that states like Pennsylvania,” which also provide help paying for medications, get reimbursed by the federal government. “That meant hundreds of millions of dollars for Pennsylvania.”

Looking further back, “I was very pleased with the results of my first bill, to establish a national veterans cemetery in Southeast Pennsylvania,” he added.

As he looks back on his time in Washington, Gerlach noted that his decision to leave seems to be part of a pattern.

“You know I was a lawyer for 10 years, and then I was in state government for 12 years and when I’m done here, I will have served 12 years in Congress,” said Gerlach.

As for what’s next, Gerlach continues to keep it close the vest.

He insists he has no immediate plans, but many say a man who has been in the public eye as long as Gerlach, who briefly ran for governor in 2010, is not likely to quietly fade away any time soon.

About the Author

Evan Brandt has worked for The Mercury since November 1997. His beat includes Pottstown, the surrounding townships and the Pottstown and Pottsgrove school districts, as well as other varied general topics like politics, the environment and education. Reach the author at ebrandt@pottsmerc.com
or follow Evan on Twitter: @PottstownNews.